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Have just come back from our first caravanning weekend

Up until now we have used a tent.

We purchased and old (but dry and tidy) Swift Dannette, spent a lot of time and a little money making it "ours"..New curtains / cupboard handles / stereo, checked the working parts (wheel bearings and brakes etc) and giving it a good clean.

And on Friday night we went on our first trip, it was only a short distance from home as we wanted to get to the site early and make sure everything worked, especially testing the 240v system as the place where we store has no mains (it worked a treat), and make sure that any problems we had with the caravan could be fixed, and finally even though I have towed trailers in the past (with live ammunition in them!!) I wanted to see how the car handled towing the caravan (no problems at all - even managed to reverse it into my spot on the storage site with minimal attempts).

We were lucky and only has two very minor problems, one of the awning poles needed a new bolt (cost 65p from a local hardware store) and the tap in the kitchen needs replacing as the microswitch is a tad tempramental (will do that next weeekend.) 
And so we had a fantastic time at the C&CC site at Kelvedon Hatch, the site staff were very friendly, the site itself was clean, quite and really nice, and the weather was FANTASTIC..

So now we are all ready for a couple of longer trips (Suffolk in 2 weeks, then Devon in August) and probably lots more, as even though the kids said they didnt want to go away in a caravan (uncool apparently) after seeing it all finished they now want to come away with us..

Would also just like to say a BIG THANKS to all the people on this site, if I have had a query on what to do/not to do, I could find an answer here most of the time without even having to ask, its nice to belong to a group of people who are willing to help complete strangers, with somethimes very technical information and even to search the web for answers.

I'm really pleased for you - our first "adventures" were to C&CC sites and we also found them to be very friendly and helpful.

Good luck with your next trips. 

Stuart

I am glad you had a nice time and that your checked out okay.  You can look forward to lots of fun now and don't forget you can now camp all year.

Valerie